abandonware games sorted by popularity

Deadly Racer is basically what happens when someone at the office said, “What if racing, but everyone might die?” Released in 1994 for DOS, it’s a fast-paced, rou...

Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 sets the stage for the series with a focus on tense, strategic encounters. In Great Naval Battles, you are dealing with limited inform...

Ishar 2 (1994, DOS) picks up where the first game left off, and then throws in more ways to punish careless adventurers. It’s a first-person RPG where managing your party isn...

Golden Oldies: Volume 1 - Computer Software Classics is less a single game and more a time capsule, offering a collection of early titles that remind you just how far gaming has co...

In this 1987 DOS game, you delve into a dungeon filled with traps and monsters. Solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and uncover the secrets of the forge. It's like playing Dungeons &...

Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom has perhaps the greatest title-to-content ratio in gaming history. Released in 1995, it embraces absurdity with every pixel, delivering ar...

Ultimate Body Blows is a fighting game that boldly enters a genre dominated by arcade giants and says, “We can do this on a PC keyboard.” Inspired heavily by Street Fig...

Don’t let the title fool you — Blitz Draughts isn’t a military simulation but rather a gloriously intense checkers game from 1992. This DOS brain-bender turns the...

Ace of Aces (1987, DOS) is a game where you pilot a WWII plane via a series of still-image panels that suggest action more than deliver it. It’s like a flipbook with ambition...

By 1993, Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! embraced fully voiced dialogue and colorful VGA graphics, giving the long-running comedy series a significant technical upgrade...

Dark, moody, and surprisingly creepy, Zork Nemesis is what happens when the whimsical world of Zork goes goth. The text adventures are gone—now it’s full-motion video, ...

Mario Bros VGA is a fan made remake of the original Mario Bros by Nintendo, the game that popularized the character of Mario, the Italian plumber that first appeared in Donkey Kong...

Released in 1994, Jagged Alliance helped define tactical turn-based strategy long before every game wanted to be an open-world crafting survival experience. Set on the troubled isl...

If you thought Norse mythology needed more monochrome graphics, Caves of Thor (1989) has you covered. It’s an early Apogee game, meaning it’s tough, quirky, and uses le...

Evasive Action is a space shooter that embraces speed and precision over spectacle. You pilot a small craft through dangerous environments, dodging obstacles and enemies with littl...

Army Men 2 doubles down on everything from the first game - more weapons, more plastic carnage, more trips to “The Real World” where you fight in bathtubs and backyards...

Guerrilla War wastes no time pretending to be subtle. You run upward, you shoot everything that moves, and occasionally you rescue a hostage who seems oddly calm about the whole si...

Released in 1990, Imperium offers strategy fans a chance to rule, conquer, and inevitably mismanage resources on a grand scale. It combines empire-building with military planning, ...

Building on its predecessor, Labyrinth of Worlds expands the formula by throwing you across multiple dimensions. Each world has its own flavor—icy wastelands, alien landscape...

Combat Chess (1997, Windows XP) takes the cerebral game of kings and adds swords, screams, and shameless violence. Every piece battle-animates into Mortal Kombat-lite fights when y...

Shadowlands (1992, DOS) hands you a party of adventurers and then expects you to coordinate them like a fantasy air-traffic controller. Instead of a single hero, you manage four ch...

The 2006 DOS revival of Ghostbusters tries to bottle the movie’s charm, with proton packs, traps, and a healthy dose of spectral chaos. The graphics may not make you scream, ...

Face Off! (1989) wastes no time telling you exactly what it wants to be: fast, noisy, and slightly unhinged. This DOS arcade sports game throws subtlety out of the window and repla...